Entertainment

New 'Need for Speed' Social Leaderboard Ups the Competition

In 2008, UK-based Criterion Games started work on Need For Speed: Hot Pursuit, a revitalization of the popular driving series. Executive producer Matt Webster says the team began to examine how online play and social features can change gameplay. Specifically, they came upon one question:

Webster was surprised that the consoles running Hot Pursuit had such "immature" features in their built-in social networks, so the team attempted to work around shortfalls by including a system called "Autolog" in the game.

Autolog functioned as an in-game matchmaking system for Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit. It would compare friends' times in different races and events, and also suggest new friends through extended networks.

"We thought that games are just more fun with friends. There’s something we can do to try and be a firestarter for social competition," Webster says. "There are a lot of games now that try to call themselves social games, but there’s nothing social about spamming my news feed on Facebook. So for me, it’s a misnomer."

According to numbers released by Electronic Arts, Need for Speed's publisher, Autolog is successful in using social to incentivize more playtime through competition. Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit players who enabled Autolog spent four times longer in game, and started six times the number of sessions, according to EA. It also connected more than four million new friends.

"When we went back to do the analysis [of Hot Pursuit], I mapped time played versus number of friends added, and it was a straight line," Webster says. "It consistently means the more people play, the more friends they added.”

Full Speed Ahead with Autolog 2

For Need for Speed: Most Wanted, Criterion experimented with much deeper integration of the Autolog system. That means there are many more entry points for competition between people in the same friends network.

Specifically, Webster highlighted the in-game billboards, through which drivers can smash their cars. Get the farthest distance after crashing through one, and your photo will be plastered on that same billboard in all your friends' games.

Need for Speed: Most Wanted was built as an open world, with challenges that encourage players to explore, says Webster.

"We try to put freedom and choice into play. They can choose what they want to do, whenever they want to do it," he says. "But so many options mean you come up with the paradox of choice there."

If a player can't figure out what he wants to do because the options seem limitless, Autolog 2 can assist him. It will pull in suggestions based on events his friends are currently running or have recently finished, and the player can hop in right away.

"Those recommendations and suggestions become even more valuable to me, so I can come in to my world, and Autolog pings me immediately to show me what my friends are playing, and also what they're beating me at. lt's constantly tracking friends and then running these comparisons and generating these instant updates, then just broadcasting that directly into the player's experience," Webster says.

Gain Infamy Across Devices

Need for Speed: Most Wanted runs on an impressive variety of platforms, including Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, PlayStation Vita, Wii U, PC and as apps for Android and iOS. With that much fragmentation, it was important to Criterion that players can still compete against their friends, no matter what devices they play on. The game's creators did this by adding a feature called Speed Points, which players earn through many competitive actions in the game. Those Speed Points stack up to improve players' rankings on the Most Wanted leaderboard, and that score is shared to all their friends across devices, via EA's Origin network.

"So I can be traveling to work and playing the iOS game, and I'm progressing through the game on that device, but any points that I'm earning are also being aggregated into my Most Wanted List ... populated by players across all different devices," Webster explains. "So it's an overarching competition to be Most Wanted amongst your friends."

While the app versions of the game aren't set in the same open world, they nonetheless offer players different challenges and opportunities for points, which they can add to their Most Wanted scores from their console games.

If you want to check out the social features of Autolog 2 and Speed Points, all versions of Need for Speed: Most Wanted will be available on Tuesday.

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